Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the newest game in the Ratchet & Clank series following up from the reboot released in 2016. The game was announced during the PlayStation 5 event on June 11th, 2020. Here is everything we know about the game.
When is it coming?
While a release date has not been announced as of this writing, the game is confirmed to be on the PS5. With so much gameplay shown, we can expect this game to release sooner rather than later, barring any delays in development.
What is happening?
Something has happened in the Ratchet & Clank universe that has made rifts randomly appear, and dimensions collapse on one another. It would appear that our heroic duo might have had something to do with it as well. We see in the gameplay reveal that you will often be interacting with these rifts, either to change the layout of the level or to teleport yourself to a completely different planet. Rifts can also drop enemies into the area out of nowhere.
How the game will play?
Everything we have seen so far has pointed towards this playing like a traditional game in the Ratchet & Clank series. The gameplay showed classic third-person strafe-shooting action you’d expect, rail grinding, and flying sections mixed in. If you played the 2016 title, it looks like this will be very similar, but with some new bells and whistles.
Ratchet will have a grappling hook that seems to only latch onto rifts. When it connects, Ratchet pulls the rift towards him. When it comes to him, he teleports to where the rift was.
What were those weapons?
Ratchet is well known for using a variety of crazy weapons, so a new game announced had to showoff at least some of what will be in his arsenal. First up was the Topiary Sprinkler. For those who do not know, topiary is when you see plants trimmed in a way that looks like something else. This grenade turns enemies into a bush form of them and lays out flowers in the blast radius.
The next shown weapon was the Shatterbomb. This looks like another grenade that puts out a booming blast that launches anything in its radius away.
The first gun we got a name for was the Enforcer. This weapon appears to fire out some red lightning. There was also a weapon that shot out some green pellets, but no name was given for that weapon. As usual, Ratchet also has his trusty wrench for melee attacks.
A new lombax?
We see Ratchet and Clank get separated by one of the rifts during the trailer for the game. During this time, we see Clank call out for Ratchet, only to be greeted by a female lombax holding a hammer. With her being so similar in design to Ratchet, it would seem to hint that you will play as her partnered up with Clank at some point in the game. This leaves us quite a few questions about how this affects Ratchet and what that means for him in a gameplay sense during that point in the story.
How is this a next-generation title?
Using the power of the PlayStation 5 will let Insomniac work in raytracing, which can be seen in the reflection of Clank in the trailers shown. Also, the power of the PS5 Solid-State Drive is on full display with the immediate change in scenery when traveling between rifts. These kinds of transitions would require loading screens on current hardware. The fact that these scenes play out seamlessly is a testament to this being an authentic next-gen experience. Insomniac has also teased the new controller for the console, named the Dualsense, will have some unique features in the game that will stand out from other entries.
